PS 3513 
.156 S8 
1918 




SUNSHINE 

AND 



[ 

■ 

1 1 AWKWARDNESS 



STRICKIAND GILLILAN 





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SUNSHINE 
AND AWKWARDNESS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



INCLUDING FINNIGIN 

INCLUDING YOU AND ME 

A SAMPLE CASE OF HUMOR 

EACH, $1.25 



SUNSHINE 
AND AWKWARDNESS 



STRICKLAND GILLILAN 

Author of ''Including Finnigin," etc. 




CHICAGO 
FORBES AND COMPANY 

1920 



1^ 









£> 



COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY 
FORBES AND COMPANY 




PREFACE 

I have been giving a lecture entitled "Sun- 
shine and Awkwardness" for a whole lot of 
years. It started by my being called on to 
recite "Finnigin to Flannigan/' when I first 
wrote that thing, in the early spring of 1897. 
I felt so keenly my extreme gawkiness that I 
apologized for getting up. People laughed at 
my apology; and I, who had never heard of a 
monologue in my whole life, found that I was 
doing one ! I let it lengthen. 

Then my sensitive soul got busy and balked. 
I wanted to make people laugh with me, and I 
hated to be laughed at. I wanted to be taken 
seriously whenever I qualifiedly pleased. I 
wondered what to do. About that time I saw 
and heard Bob Burdette. I said to myself, 
"I can do what I want to. I can be as funny 
as the mischief and yet get myself taken seri- 

5 



PREFACE 

ously when I want to, and thus save my own 
self-respect and not feel like an idiot or a clown. 
I have seen a man do it, and I can do it too. I 
shall reserve, as Bob did, the right to be serious 
at any unexpected moment." 

So I tried. It worked pretty well, thank 
you. I found my stuff growing in length, and 
I built in little blending places to make it all 
sound as if it followed naturally. I let the 
audience get to thinking it was going to laugh 
all night and then I changed its tune. It was 
hard to do at first. But I found that if I my- 
self were really in earnest the crowd would find 
it out and join me. I also found that a crowd 
that has been cleanly tickled is in the finest pos- 
sible state of mind to be clearly taught. And 
I have had a perfectly ripping time ever since, 
with my folks-in-front. Except — 

I said an earful then, son ! Except was my 
middle name for several years. I reached a 
point that all young lecturers reach, where I 
thought I was the supreme test of a com- 

6 



PREFACE 

munity's intelligence. If I shot my stuff at 
them and they didn't impersonate pretzels with 
the spasms of laughter I caused, they were 
fools. I was a sort of htmus paper thrust into 
their midst to test their mental reaction. If I 
turned blue, they were alkali, and if I turned 
pink they were acid. This reaction stuff* may 
be exactly wrong, but you get the idea anyway. 

So long as I had that idea I alternated be- 
tween the happy heights and the dismal depths. 
I hated audiences and towns and committee- 
men and bureaus and oh, I don't know what 
all. I was a martyr loose in an unfeeling 
world, where only the smartest audiences took 
kindly to me. 

Then I got wise by realizing I was foolish. 
I found that I had to make good separately 
and anew in every town I went into. I found 
that if I was nice and friendly and liked people 
and wanted just my hardest to give them a 
happy evening that wouldn't leave a bad taste 
in their mouths, I had a fair chance of getting 

7 



PREFACE 

myself liked both on and off the platform not 
just off and on as I had been doing. Then I 
began being humble and fearfully sincere in 
my anxiety to mean something bright and help- 
ful to a neighborhood. And it was easier to 
succeed. I quit being sore at the boys on the 
front seat, because the boys began to forget 
their peanuts and listen to me. I had learned 
"English as she is spoke," and had not always 
succeeded with it. I learned the human lan- 
guage as she is felt, and began to be under- 
stood. 

In this book are the things I said when I 
began giving a whole evening, after I had 
been in the business a few years. This is a full 
lecture-course evening. When I speak at a 
Chautauqua after a prelude, I take an axe to 
this and give about half of it. When I come 
back the next year I give the other half. So 
if you hear me in the summer you'll hear, for 
the first two times in your town, just about the 
sum total of this book's contents, with many 

8 



PREFACE 

embellishments and bringings-up-to-date. If 
I come a third and a fourth time you'll hear 
variations of a wholly new lecture, "A Sample 
Case of Humor," which is another story and 
another book-to-be. 

I never heard of any one asking Mark 
Twain or James Whitcomb Riley who wrote 
the stuff they gave. But they ask me. I 
blush and say, "I done it myself." For like 
them, only infinitely less in my own estimation 
and that of two or three other ignorant folks, 
I write the things I give. 

Now a gentle word about stories, son : Did 
you ever read what Kipling said about himself? 
This is it: 

"When 'Omer smote his bloomin' lyre 
He'd 'card men talk, on land and sea ; 
And what he thought he might require. 
He went and took, the same as me." 

Me too, Rudyard. Whenever I saw or 
heard the nucleus of a good, applicable yarn, 

9 



PREFACE 

I took the little germ and put it in the window 
box or flower-pot of my own imagination, took 
care of it until it blossomed, and placed it on 
exhibition. I have my own version of stories 
— therein lies the right I have to call them 
*'my" stories. I don't believe anybody ever 
originated any story. But though the carpen- 
ter doesn't originate the lumber with which he 
makes a house, nobody hesitates to say that 
the carpenter is the maker of that house. 

Now, here's the book. The lecture isn't al- 
ways just like this, and it will change — oh, how 
it will change! But it follows the same gen- 
eral direction that my first attempt at lecturing 
followed — it is a sort of honest human docu- 
ment telling in the first person the story of 
most normal human lives. I love the lecture 
myself because a lot of good people have shown 
a strong liking for it, and their judgment is 
infinitely better than mine. 

Yours garrulously, 

Strickland Gillilan. 
10 



SUNSHINE 

AND 

AWKWARDNESS 



Ladies and Gentlemen and Any Others Who 
May be Here : — 

There are several of you present on this oc- 
casion, I notice, who are making absolutely 
your first public appearance — before me. Yet 
I hope that fact may not embarrass you any 
more than you can't help ; and that by the time 
we have been together here a little while, by the 
time you and I have recovered to some extent 
from the shock, and by the time I have made 
a number of starthng and, perhaps, entirely 
un-called-for confessions, we may feel as if we 
had known each other as long as is necessary. 

11 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

How Things are Named 

This entertainment of which I am about to 
begin to reheve my system — hable to begin 
almost any time, now ! — is not a lecture. It is 
called a lecture because — well, because it isn't 
one. So many things in this world are named 
that same way — according to some law of op- 
posites or contraries that we can't understand 
or explain. For instance, when a baby wakes 
and cries in the night, we give it a glass of 
water and tell it to dry up; when we are en- 
gaged in the familiar process of robbing a 
chicken of all its clothing, we say we are dress- 
ing the chicken ; and when two railroad loco- 
motives come together we say it is a collision, 
while when two babies come together we say 
it's twins. 

The Title Explained Away 

This is simply a bunch of rambling, homely, 
every-day talks, by a rambling, homely, every- 

12 



A DISAPPOINTMENT 

day man. At least I think I am homely every 
day. I can't remember having had a day off. 
If this affair could, by the furthest stretch of 
the most flexible imagination, be called a lec- 
ture of any kind, it might just as well as not be 
called by a title an enemy of mine gave it, once, 
after he had watched it through to the bitter 
end. He said it ought to be called an illus- 
trated lecture on "Sunshine and Awkward- 
ness," with the audience illustrating the sun- 
shine while I did all the heavy work myself. 

A Disappointment 

I have often suspected that the reason I took 
up with the sunshine end of this thing was that 
when I was a little boy growing up on a farm 
— now, what do you know about that ! There's 
the same disappointment I meet every place I 
face an audience. I have been before thou- 
sands and thousands of audiences, from the 
ragged edges of Maine to the flea-bitten sands 
of the Pacific, and have broken to nearly every 

13 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

audience, as sensationally as I could, the news 
that I had grown up on a farm, and I have 
never yet seen anybody look surprised at it ! 

A Sunshine Absorbent 

But, as I was about to say when I inter- 
rupted me, while I was growing up on a farm I 
absorbed all the sunshine I could. I used up 
all the sunshine they had in that vicinity that 
wasn't needed for the other vegetation. I did 
this by inserting as few obstacles as possible be- 
tween my somewhat skimpy anatomy and the 
sun. To be perfectly clear in my statement, 
so that he who reads may run if it will be any 
relief to him, I wore just as few clothes as the 
laws of my native state of Ohio would permit 
any human to wear and remain in sight. My 
costume, from early in May to the back end 
of October, consisted entirely of a pair of 
threadbare blue overalls, usually hung at half 
mast, with a hickory shirt, one bed-ticking gal- 
lus and a rag wrapped around one toe. 

14 



A GALLUS SOLO 

A Gallus Solo 

Now there were two reasons why I wore just 
one gallus, in my exuberant youth: If I had 
worn two galluses in that community, at the 
same time, I should have been called a dude. 
And the other was that my parents were in 
very limited circumstances financially, ard 
they found it a great deal easier to keep me in 
suspense than in suspenders. So they did. 

A Freckle Trust 

I started out every spring with about nine 
hundred and twenty-four freckles — now that 
isn't official. The official returns aren't in yet ! 
— and I wound up in the fall with just one 
freckle. That is official. The freckles with 
which I opened the season looked like rust, and 
the continuous one with which I finished in the 
fall looked like a trust — it had absorbed all the 
raw material obtainable and was negotiating 
for more. 

15 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

An Incurable Case 

It was while I was growing up amid these 
luxurious and pampered circumstances that my 
parents discovered, with some degree of alarm, 
that I had in me the microbes of newspaper, 
magazine and platform humor, and poetry. 
It worried them almost to death ; for, although 
you who have been watching me closely have 
seen nothing to make you even suspect it, my 
folks were nice folks. And they didn't want 
any of the boys to go wrong if they could pre- 
vent it. So they applied every form of home 
treatment they knew — including the laying on 
of hands ! — to try to get this out of me, but the 
treatments were all total failures, and the case 
at length became chronic and incurable. 

A Mother's Forbearance 

Among the first outbreaks of what proved 
afterward to be the worst possible case of the 
horriblest form of so-called humor that ought 

16 



SOME SINCERE BUTTONS 

to be punished with death by slow torture was 
once when my mother had just got through 
baking and churning. She asked me if I 
wouldn't take grandma's bread and butter 
over. I told her I'd take her bread, but I 
wouldn't but 'er over. And in spite of that, 
my life was spared ! 

Some Sincere Buttons 

And then there was my little brother Ernest. 
Why, to live in the same farm-house and grow 
up on the same farm, in the same township, 
quarter-section and range, with him, was a lib- 
eral education in humor. Ernest was the most 
peculiar child I have ever experienced. He 
had all of those things called "marked peculiar- 
ities," and then he had a whole lot of other pe- 
culiarities that we didn't have time to mark. 
He was all peculiarities, Ernest was. 

One of the most remarkable things about my 
little brother Ernest was his appetite. He 
never got hungry at all. He just stayed hun- 

17 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

gry. And you had to be mighty careful what 
you left lying around if you ever wanted to see 
it any more. Well, one time mother had been 
to town and bought a whole lot of things for the 
farm-house and had left her packages lying all 
about the sitting-room while she hurried out to 
cook dinner, so we could go out and do our 
seventh or eighth half-day's work that day 
while she staid in the house and did her tenth or 
eleventh. Ernest was snooping around among 
the things she had brought home. He found a 
card of buttons. Now, as nearly as I can recol- 
lect, that card was about six inches square, blue 
on one side and white on the other, as so many 
button cards are built. On the blue side were 
sewed three dozen of those old-fashioned white 
glass shirt buttons — about as big as a dime or 
fifteen cents — in beautiful straight rows — 
straight as a gun-barrel. 

Ernest looked at those beautiful straight 
rows laid out symmetrically across that beauti- 
ful dark blue buttonscape until, it being so 

18 



SOME SINCERE BUTTONS 

nearly meal-time, he lost control, absolutely, of 
that destructive appetite he always had with 
him. He started in to swallow those buttons 
one at a time just as fast as he could loosen 
them from the card. Toward the last, by hur- 
rying some and taking both hands and some 
enthusiasm to it, he got such a motion on him 
that you could hear those buttons click against 
each other on the way down. 

Mother caught him just as he had swal- 
lowed the last button and was wondering 
what he had better do with the card. Mother 
was awfully peeved, for she had been intending 
to use those buttons herself, that afternoon. 
Maybe not the same way. She punished 
Ernest just as hard as she could. She never 
punished any of us on an empty stomach. 
She alwaj^s turned us over. She punished 
Ernest as hard as she could and Ernest cried 
as hard as he could, and said he was only in 
fun; but mother knew only too well that the 
buttons were in Ernest. 

19 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Marketing Masterpieces 

It was only a little while after I broke out 
tvith the poetry disease that I began worrying 
and fretting over the fact that the world was 
missing all these beautiful gems I was creat- 
ing. I felt so sorry for the world that I could 
hardly keep back the tears. Once when my 
pity for the suffering universe had got entirely 
beyond my control, I gathered up an arm-load 
of the stuff I had been doing and carried it to 
the nearest town and showed it — I mean I 
started to show it — to a newspaper man. He 
looked at the verses as long as he cared to and 
at me as long as he could stand it, and then 
said: 

"Boy, what makes you do this sort of thing? 
Aren't you feeling well?" 

I told him I thought I was getting big 
enough now to be doing something to keep the 
wolf from the door. 

"You've done it already," he said. "Just 
20 



THAT INSULTING MIRROR 

take this stuff home and hang it on the door in 
plain sight and no wolves or anything else will 
bother you." 

He said that and some other things that 
made me believe, almost as if he had told me, 
that he didn't want those verses, and I took 
them away from him. 

That Insulting Mirror 

But I had another errand in town — it was 
too far from our house to town to waste a whole 
trip on a piffling errand like that. This other 
job I had that day was nothing more nor less 
important, momentous, portentous and epoch- 
marking than the purchase of my biennial suit 
of store-clothes. There was a reason for call- 
ing this biennial. I got a suit only ever}^ other 
year, of course, like the other boys in that neck 
of the woods. Up to this time my folks had 
never taken me with them when they com- 
mitted that outrage on me. Now, there are so 
many perfectly good reasons for not taking a 

21 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

boy to town in daylight, when it is two years 
since his last suit of clothes, that I shan't ex- 
plain it to you at all. They had always left 
me at home and bought those clothes by guess. 
And they were horrible guessers. Toward the 
last they had been making such a mess of this 
trying to fit me with a suit of ready-made 
hand-me-downs while I was nine miles away 
growing four inches that same afternoon, that 
the neighbors had begun to complain bitterly 
that I interfered with scenery around there. 

The folks had grown so discouraged and 
downcast and disheartened about it they said 
they weren't going to try it any more. They 
were going to let me go alone, the next time I 
was due for a suit. 

They did as they had threatened — let me go 
by myself for it. As I approached the door 
of that clothing "emporium," as it was labeled 
over the front elevation of this story-and-a- 
half sky-scraper — scared to death — stepping 
higher than a blind horse in a pumpkin patch, 

22 



THAT INSULTING MIRROR 

and with my eyes sticking out so far you could 
sit on one and saw the other one off — I was 
met by a wide gentleman with an eagle beak 
instead of a nose and a smile all over what was 
left of him. He told me he was glad to see me. 
I was surprised at that. I had never met the 
gentleman before and I couldn't see why he 
was glad. I had never met anybody who was 
glad to see me. But I've since that time 
learned more about the retail ready-made cloth- 
ing trade, and it is all clear to me. It was 
nearly all "clear" to him, then. He went on 
to say he had a suit of clothes back there that 
he had been saving for me. I didn't be- 
lieve that then, but I do now. He would have 
had that same suit yet, if I hadn't gone and 
taken it away from him myself. 

While he was digging down into the very 
bottom of this tall stack of moth-eaten, super- 
annuated relics where all these years — fifteen 
or twenty years at the very least — he had been 
so faithfully saving this suit for me, I amused 

23 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

myself by looking about the room. I'd never 
been in a big store before, in all my life. Just 
across the aisle from where I stood, I saw the 
funniest thing I had ever seen. It was in some 
ways in the shape of "the human form divine," 
but not enough to hurt. It had on a pair of 
trousers that — well, to use a railroad man's de- 
scription of those trousers, they were all right 
along the main lines, but they were sadly lack- 
ing in terminal facilities. They didn't make 
the right kind of junction either with the boots 
at one end or with the coat at the other. Al- 
though there were excellent switching facilities 
near the northern terminus. The coat looked 
like a narrow collar with sleeves to it. The 
boots were those wrinkled, squushed-up things 
that look like accordions, with mud on 'em. 
Wlien I saw that thing standing there looking 
right at me, I laughed just as hard as I could, 
and so did it. And then it dawned on me that 
I was having my first look in a full-length mir- 
ror. I've never been proud since. 

24 



THE BREAKING AWAY 

The Breaking Away 

But there came to me a time such as comes 
to every other gawky, pigeon-toed, ungainly, 
self-conscious, supersensitive country lad whose 
ambition takes complete charge of him and 
leads him whithersoever it will, when the farm 
and I had to part. Now, we human beings are 
a queer lot of freaks, and we have a queer lot of 
habits. The habits have to be queer, for they 
were made to fit us — made to measure. And 
among the queerest of those queer habits is that 
of traveling through life looking backward in 
search of our happiness. Sitting always on 
the hind platform of the last car in life's train, 
wearing blinkers like a plow-horse, facing in- 
variably toward the rear, never seeing any of 
the beauties along on either side the right of 
way until we are nearly ready to go around a 
sharp curve or into a dark tunnel. We never 
notice any of the beauty or sweetness of hfe 
while it is close, within easy reach and tender 

25 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

touch. No, we're not quite intelligent enough 
for that, and maybe we never shall be. It is 
always in retrospect, from the next part of our 
life, when the best and the sweetest are gone 
forever. 

Anyway, that was the way with my old 
home life and me, as it has been perhajDS 
with most of you people who have broken that 
old home tie permanently and must be with the 
rest of you when that time of life overtakes 
you. And the memory of those days that 
seemed to me so much like a prison when 
I was in the midst of them with no hope 
of escape, has seemed to me a great deal more 
like my finest possible conception of heaven, 
as I have looked back at them through 
the "mist of years" that we read about, and 
sometimes through the mist of tears, that we 
know about. And this is the way that memory 
crystallized itself into words for me. 

Now if you folks don't care too much, or 
object too violently, I am going to give you 

26 



ME AN' PAP AN' MOTHER 

this in dialect — not because I hate you for any- 
thing, for I don't ; or because I love dialect for 
its own sake, for I do not, although I have lived 
in Indiana more than once. But because when 
I think of those dear old days down on that 
hilly, worn-out Southern Ohio farm and the 
sweet childhood associations that nobody ever 
has had world-wisdom enough to appreciate 
while they are present and passing, those 
memories fairly clamor to be allowed to talk 
things over with me in that same code of signals 
that we used instead of the English language. 
And here is the whole short, simple, unembel- 
lished story : 

Me an' Pap an' Mother 

When I was a little tike 

I s^t at th' table 
'Tween my mother an' my pap ; 

Eat all I was able. 
Pap he fed me on one side, 

Mammy on th' other. ' 
Tell ye, we was chums, them days — 

Me an' pap an' mother. 
27 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Sundays, we'd take great, long walks 

Through th' woods an' pasters ; 
Pap he al'ays packed a cane, 

Mother'n me picked asters. 
Sometimes thej's a sister 'long, 

Sometimes they's a brother; 
But they al'ays was us three — 

Me an' pap an' mother. 

Pap, he didn't gabble much; 

Hel' his head down, thinkin'. 
Didn't seem t' hear us talk, 

Nor th' cow-bells clinkin'. 
Love-streaks all 'peared worried out 

'Bout one thing er nuther; 
Didn't al'ays understand 

Pap — that's me an' mother. 

I got big an' went away ; 

Left the farm behind me. 
Thinkin' o' that partin', yit, 

Seems t' choke an' blind me. 
Course I'd be all safe an' good 

With m' married brother. 
But we had to part, us three — 

Me an' pap an' mother. 



28 



ME AN' PAP AN' MOTHER 

Hurried back, one day ; found pap 

Changed, an' pale an' holler ; 
Seenr right off he'd have t' go — 

Where we couldn't foller. 
Lovin' streaks all showed up then — 

Ah, we loved each other! 
Talked fast, jest t' keep back tears — 

Me an' pap an' mother. 

Pap he's — dead ; but mother ain't ; 

Soon will be, I reckon ; 
Claims already she can see 

Pap's forefinger beckon. 
Life hain't long — I'll go myself 

One these days eruther. 
Then we'll have good times agin, 

Me an' pap an' mother. 

Purtier hills we'll have t' climb, 

Saunterin' 'long old fashion. 
Hear th' wild birds singin' round, 

See th' river splashin' — 
If God 'd only let us three 

Be 'lone, like we'd ruther, 
Heaven'd be a great ol' place 

For me an' pap an' mother. 



29 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

College Days 

And now, although this is going to surprise 
you folks within an inch of your lives, if you're 
kind enough to believe it without any evidence 
before you, I went to college awhile! I went 
until I had spent all my own money and that 
of my close friends who weren't too miserably 
close. It was while I was there that I tried to 
take lessons in elocution. But they didn't 
take. I broke all the chandeliers in the 
recitation rooms trying to give the regular 
gestures to a lot of cut-and-dried elocution- 
ary spasms, such as "Barbarous Frietchie," 
"Paul Revere's Ride," "Sheridan's Ditto," 
"Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother," 
"Lasca," "Curfew Shall Not Ring This Even- 
ing if I can help it," and that other old familiar 
selection we used to grub out of McGuffey's 
Fourth Reader, "The Boy Stewed on the 
Burning Deck." 

I am still scared about gestures. You have 
30 



COLLEGE DAYS 

probably noticed that I make most of mine in 
my pockets. I had the gestures scared out of 
me when I was little. I was the youngest of a 
large, long-limbed, muscular and impulsive 
family, and a great many gestures were made 
about our place that stopped when they reached 
me. 

Some right forcible gestures, too. I was 
merely a sort of back-stop for gestures. I 
hated to see a gesture start. If I couldn't see 
its finish, I'd feel it. And then I was always 
deeply impressed and warned by the old story 
of the preacher who owned just two gestures — 
they were his whole box of tricks. One 
straight up, one straight down, following each 
other in regular succession and alternation, no 
matter what he was talking about. And once 
they "broke bad" for him. He finished and 
ruined a perfectly good sermon by saying, with 
an upward point, "When the roll is called up 
yonder, I'll," pointing downward, "be there." 
It put him plumb out of business. 

31 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

An Anti-Caruso Career 

It was also while I was in college that I used 
to sing. I beg your pardon. I used to try- 
to sing. I quit. I had reasons for it. So 
had everybody that heard me. I am what you 
might call a reformed vocalist. I tried ten 
years before I gave it up as an utter fizzle. 
Now, that ten years I squandered may seem to 
you a long time to find out one can't sing, and 
quit it. But it isn't long for that job. That's 
the slowest job there is — finding out one can't 
sing and quitting it. Why, just think a mo- 
ment how long it is taking the one I made you 
think of just then, to find that out and quit! 
Any of you here can silently pick out — now, 
don't point I That would be nasty! — half-a- 
dozen anyway, right here in your home neigh- 
borhood, of those home-grown coyotes that 
think they are canaries. Some of 'em have 
been yowling around in this vicinity for as 
much as twenty years, and haven't found out 

32 



AN ANTI-CARUSO CAREER 

the truth yet. And there's no way to stop 'em 
unless you kill 'em. And that isn't right. It 
is nearly as bad to kill anybody like that as it 
is to kill a person ! 

I found out three things that made me quit : 
First, that I couldn't sing ; second, that it takes 
two things — voice and ambition — to make a 
real singer; I had only the ambition — I had no 
voice in the matter; and third and most im- 
portant was the discovery that a flexible voice 
doesn't always go with a "rubber neck." And 
then I quit. But I made the usual number of 
breaks in public before quitting. Why, I used 
to have a sneaking suspicion — to say nothing 
of a haunting fear — that maybe the man who 
wrote that beautiful poem beginning "Break, 
break, break," meant something personal by it. 
I thought sure he had heard me somewhere. I 
didn't see how else he ever got that idea of one 
break right after another all the time. 

I used to make noises in a church choir. I 
did that for four weeks before they found out 

33 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

what was the matter with the music. They 
thought all the time that something had got 
stuck in one of the organ pipes. That was the 
first time I had known I could throw my voice. 
If I had known it before, I'd have thrown it 
away. But it all came out the first time I was 
called on for a solo. You can see how it would 
be then. No use to try to conceal it any 
longer. They caught me with the goods on 
me. 

Church Choiritis 

It was one Friday night at choir practice, 
and we were howling and gouging and thump- 
ing away on one of those mussed-up anthems, 
entitled "There is a Gate That Stands Ajar." 

You know how they build those anthem 
things. You've seen 'em do it. You just take 
any little sentence, it doesn't matter how long 
or how short it is — just so it's a sentence. And 
figuratively speaking you run it through a sau- 
sage-mill or a fodder-shredder and cut it all up 

34 



CHURCH CHOIRITIS 

into little fragments. Then you take those gib- 
lets and put 'em back together again, just any- 
way at all, so they are tother end to and don't 
make any sense, and then you do it over again. 
You keep on mangling and pulverizing and 
vivisecting that poor inoffensive sentence that 
never did you any hanii in its whole life, until 
its best friend wouldn't recognize it if he met it 
in the big road, in daylight. And when you've 
been at this about eleven and a half minutes 
by the clock, until the whole choir has begun 
to turn purple around the gills and gasp a 
little and show signs of lung-failure, you get 
together with one final spasmodic, heroic, over 
the top effort, with what breath you can scare 
up among you, and say, *'Ah — men — !" just as 
hard as you can. And that's an anthem. It's 
just a scrambled hymn, that's all. Anyway, 
that is the way that they had erected the one we 
were teasing that night. And the leader of 
this choir turned to me with a look on his face 
of a man who has been suspecting something 

35 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

for a good while and is about to find out the 
truth, and said: "Will you kindly take this 
first solo part?" 

Well, I certainly did hate to do it. For I 
knew what was wrong, and I knew what would 
happen if I did it. Like other poor singers, I 
wanted to stay in the choir. — Now that snicker 
of yours was a direct insult to somebody in 
your neighborhood ! — But he was running that 
choir. I had to obey orders. So I took that 
solo. I had never been exposed to a solo be- 
fore in my life. I broke out with it right away. 
I had it bad. I hadn't got to the end of the 
first line of that "There is a Gate that Stands 
Ajar" before the leader called out in a loud and 
agonized tone of voice, "Hold on! ! !" Now, 
that surprised me a whole lot more than any- 
thing I had ever heard. The little I had 
learned about music was the time-marks. And 
I know as well as you musical high-brows know, 
that when you have a coal-black note on the 
lower end of an upright stick, and a couple of 

36 



A REGULAR QUARTET 

narrow flags on the upper end of that same 
stick, and no period after it, you have no busi- 
ness holding on. 

But he was running that job. The old choir 
wasn't mine. So I held on like a bull-dog or a 
mud-turtle. And it wasn't more than half a 
second more before he called out a whole lot 
louder, "Let go! ! ! ! !" And I did. Then I 
asked him why in the world he had stopped me 
that way before I had a good start, and he said, 
"Anybody who had good sense ought to know 
that no gate could stand a jar like that." 

A Regular Quartet 

But I used to belong to a college quartet. 
Now, I'm not bragging about this. I say it in 
abject shame, as anybody should who owns up 
to having belonged to a quartet or any other 
criminal organization. I used to think maybe 
ours was the worst quartet there could be. 
But I've since heard quartets that cheered me 
up, no end ! I know now that ours could have 

37 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

sung ever since then and got worse every ap- 
pearance and never missed a date. But I've 
always held firmly to the belief that ours should 
have been the worst. Nothing has ever shaken 
my faith in that. There was no demand for a 
worse one. They never invited us back any- 
where. They used to dare us back, but they 
couldn't fool us. We knew what they wanted. 
I don't know whether you folks ever thought 
of it this way — maybe you didn't. But there 
are remarkable points of resemblance between 
a male quartet and a baseball outfit. There 
must be in each organization, as anybody 
knows, a first and a second base. Our male 
quartet carried this comparison a great deal 
further than that. We nearly got into the 
national league. They did let us into the Ep- 
worth League once for fifteen or twenty 
minutes ! Our music was never catchy and we 
never made a hit because it never was pitched 
right. And we never succeeded in getting 
properly through a score because we made so 

38 



A REGULAR QUARTET 

many errors on runs. We had plenty of speed 
but no control. And the kind-hearted but im- 
patient public supplied us with a short stop. 
In fact, there was no field for us, although we 
batted around a great deal. And the angry 
audience gave us a home-run every place we 
sang! 

The first place we tried to sing publicly was 
at the JNIethodist Sunday School in the college 
town where they were letting us stay tempo- 
rarily. The superintendent of the Sunday 
School had told us himself that — well, I found 
out afterward that he had been going to resign 
anyway — he told us we might go up and close 
the Sunday School. We did! We cer-tainly 
did! 

The next effort we made was a serenade 
under the windows of some people we were 
mad at, out in the part of town where there 
was no police protection. We made our cus- 
tomary set of noises there for nearly an hour 
without any interruption at all — they didn't 

39 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

even shoot at us ! — and we thought we might be 
improving. But next day one of the boys 
found out that the folks had moved away the 
week before. 

There was a red-headed fellow in our quar- 
tet. He was the reddest-headed person or the 
redheadedest person — now, just look what a 
break I've made! I intended to say that man 
was the reddest-headed person that ever oc- 
curred. But after looking over this audience 
I can't make the statement at all ! I can only 
say, now, that he was the reddest-headed per- 
son I had ever seen at that time. He was so 
red-headed that — well, you can't believe every- 
thing you hear, but they told me he had to wear 
an asbestos hat. The fire insurance companies 
raised the rate on every frame house he got a 
room in. They just kept him moving all the 
time with the hose-cart about a block behind 
the express wagon hauling his trunk. He 
tried to take an egg-shampoo once, and you 
could smell scorched omelet for a mile. The 

40 



A REGULAR QUARTET 

last I ever heard of him he was down in Wash- 
ington, De Ceased, trying to get a patent on 
a fire-proof pillow-case he had invented. He 
was our second tenor and he came from 
Kansas. 

Now the worst thing about him was not 
the fact that he came from Kansas — you know 
coming from Kansas is a sign of good sense 
if you come quickly and stay. But he had 
a real fault aside from his entirely uninten- 
tional sorrelness — you know a person may be 
perfectly red-headed and perfectly respectable 
at the same time. He was as absent-minded 
as he was red-headed — and that was his real 
handicap. 

Why, he was as absent-minded as the man 
who had been out camping for several weeks 
among the wood-ticks, leeches, chiggers and 
other penetrating and investigative fauna, 
and the first morning he was at home for 
breakfast he poured maple-syrup over his 
ankles and scratched his pancakes! He was 

41 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

possibly as absent-minded as the man you've all 
heard about who went home late one drench- 
ing, sopping rainy night, tenderly put his wet 
umbrella to bed and then went and stood in the 
sink all night. Maybe as absent-minded as the 
man who went out to milk late one night, hung 
the milk -pail up in the cow-stall and milked 
in his lantern! 

Or he may have been — don't misunderstand 
me! I say he may have been, there's no affi- 
davit goes with this statement — as absent- 
minded as the economical friend I used to have. 
Now, "economical" is the Sunday name for 
what was the matter with him. That word 
doesn't even suggest him. The word stingy is 
too weak a term. There is no word! If he 
had been going to "give until it hurt" he would 
have given a nickel and died in awful agony. 
Why, this man was so close he was almost 
adjacent ! I say I used to have this friend. I 
haven't him now. He died of thirst right 
after they put a water meter in his resi- 

42 



THE PERILS OF ECONOMY 

dence. If they'd throw samples of medicine 
around town and leave any on his porch, he'd 
go out and take every bit of that medicine, 
according to directions, whether he had any- 
thing like that the matter with him or not — 
or whether he was even able to have it. But 
one time this economical person attended a 
public sale. You knew that without me tell- 
ing you. You know that sort of hairpin never 
would miss a public sale. A public sale is a 
reunion of tightwads. 

The Perils of Economy 

I say this man attended a public sale and 
there he saw a golden opi^ortunity to buy a fine 
set of false teeth, scarcely used, at a bargain. 
And he bought them. For some reason or an- 
other, those teeth didn't just exactly fit him 
in places. In his mouth, they didn't fit him 
at all. But he kept them, all right. He 
never gave anything up. He wore them 
around in his pocket. They chewed just as 

43 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

well there as anywhere, and didn't hurt him so 
badly. One time he was wearing these misfit 
false teeth around in the hip-pocket of a pair 
of bargain-counter overalls that he had picked 
up at a sale somewhere. He had to keep 
picking them up all the time he had 'em on, 
too. They were about nine or eleven sizes too 
big for him. He had to galius them up around 
his Adam's apple to keep them on. One day 
he was going around with this garment on, 
tuned up to concert pitch, the teeth in his hip- 
pocket, when he stepped on a banana peel and 
bit a wart off from the back of his neck ! And 
you'd be surprised to know how it graveled 
him to part with that dear old seed-wart. 
He'd been using it as a collar-button for twelve 
years. 

A Heart-Broken Author 

But the worst thing about the absent-mind- 
edness of this young fellow in our quartet was 
the way it would break in on our singing. We 

44 



A HEART-BROKEN AUTHOR 

would be working away on some piece we didn't 
know very well — and you wouldn't believe me 
if I told you how many pieces we didn't know 
very well. That was our specialty! — I say 
we'd be working away on one of those six or 
seven thousand familiar airs that we knew well 
enough to do anything to except sing them; 
we'd all be watching the words and music for 
fear we'd make some new kind of break, that 
is if there were any new kinds, when instead 
of singing what we were looking at he would 
sing whatever he thought about at the time! 
You can see that would get us into some hor- 
rible scrapes. 

One time we were working away in public 
on a touching little ditty that used to be pop- 
ular then — almost silly enough to be popular 
now, but not quite that bad — a slushy little 
ballad called, "Two Little Girls In Blue." 
His mind took an unscheduled excursion to 
his cyclonic home in Kansas and he got it, 
"Blue Little Girls In Two"! And then I 

45 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

remember with painful distinctness one time 
we were giving what we called a concert, in 
public. I don't know what the public called 
it. I'd run a mile to keep from finding out 
their name for it. But that's what we were 
doing, whatever its right name is. 

All of the audience was sound asleep except 
one man — stranger to us sitting about half-way- 
down the aisle, sobbing and blubbering as if he 
had lost his season ticket. We boys were very 
proud for a little bit. But after the affair was 
all over, we drew cuts, as we always did, to see 
whose turn it was to go down the aisle and 
wake them and tell them they could go home 
now. I got the short and unlucky one that 
night. As I wandered along the aisle on that 
dangerous errand, risking my life every time I 
got anybody wide awake, I couldn't resist the 
temptation to lay my hand on the arm of this 
poor fellow whose cheeks still glittered with 
his honest grief. I said, **My brother, you 
seem to have been deeply affected by our sing- 

46 



A HEART-BROKEN AUTHOR 

ing!" "Yes," he sobbed bitterly, "I wrote that 
piece!" 

But even now, 

Mj voice is like the filing of a saw ; 

My friends flee when I agitate my jaw; 
I can empty any room with my rusty basso boom, 

And my vocalizing breaks the nuisance law. 
But there's one — she's pretty, too ; and as wise, 
some ways, as you. 

Who thinks my voice the finest in the land — 
She comes with fist in eye begging, "Papa, baby 
bye ! " 

When the sieepy-man is scattering his sand. 

When the evening romp is winding to a close 

And my little baby's cheek with laughter glows, 
When her night-gown from the press has replaced 
her daytime dress. 

Then the little darling rubs her eyes and nose ; 
She comes with dimpled hands and in mute appeal- 
ing stands 

As she says : "I dot some somefin' in my eye ! 
Take me up a 'ittle bit, 'cause I'm sleepy I can get, 

An' p'ease, sing to me, papa — baby bye." 



47 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Yes, my voice is like the filing of a saw, 

And my friends are fewer when I use my jaw; 
I have emptied many a room with my raucous basso 
boom 
And my vocalizing cracks the nuisance law. 
But while that one, sweet and true, thinks my voice 
as good as new, 
I'll not envy any singer in the land ; 
For she comes with fist in eye, begging, **Papa, baby 
bye," 
When the sleepy-man is scattering his sand. 

Just Among Us Parents 

But that was when my children were real 
small. Just as soon as they got big enough 
to have what people call "an ear for music," 
that all had to stop. The only way I could put 
a child to sleep after that w^as to hold it by main 
strength while I sang one verse and tell it if it 
didn't go right to sleep I'd sing the next verse. 
It worked just like morphine or knock-out 
drops. One time when I had put one of 
them to sleep by that or some other Ladies' 
Home Journal recipe, I had lugged her up- 

48 



JUST AMONG US PARENTS 

stairs to her own room and was sitting be- 
side her bed — you know that white iron one, 
with the railings at the sides that you can let 
down if you want her to fall out in the night, 
and the brass knobs on the posts — sitting in an 
old busted down rocking chair that had got-to- 
looking so ornery downstairs that we had car- 
ried it upstairs out of sight, but went right on 
using — sitting there holding one of her sweaty, 
dimpled fists in one of my big paws, looking at 
her flushed and sleeping face, gathering there- 
from my stock of patience and courage and 
strength for the next day's work and strain and 
anxiety — now, some of you folks know just ex- 
actly what I'm talking about. The rest of you 
think you know, but you don't ! Not through 
lack of attention or intelhgence — you are giv- 
ing me the one and you have plenty of the 
other. It is only that life hasn't yet prepared 
all of you to understand this. 

Unless you have been in the midst of that 
sacred, lumpy-throated moment, right after the 

49 



SUNSHIISTE AND AWKWARDNESS 

little thing drops over the edge into the depths 
of dreamland, when your feelings have changed 
in less than the twinkling of an eye from 
peevishness to something so nearly worship you 
couldn't tell the difference if you tried — unless 
you have been in the midst of that wonderful 
moment with your own child, you don't know 
what I'm talking about now, any more than if 
I were talking in ancient Sanskrit and saying 
it backwards. 

This is something you have to know with 
your heart, after you have lived it. With 
your head alone you couldn't understand 
this in a million years; and never in a million 
lifetimes even with your heart unless it had 
come into your own life. Those of you who 
love babies know that there is nothing else in all 
this world so indescribably, so unaccountably 
pathetic as the face of a baby when it's asleep ! 
You've noticed this. No matter how full of 
fun and frolic the little thing may be from 
morning till night, running from one bit of 

50 



JUST AMONG US PARENTS 

trouble to another — in a hurry to get into the 
next scrape — getting hurt every few minutes, 
falhng off of everything but the ceihng — the 
very instant sleep drops her soft veil over the 
waxen lids, there is that touch of inevitable and 
ineffable pathos! We know not whence it 
comes at dark, we know not whither it flees at 
dawn — we just simply, stupidly, humanly 
know: "There it is again!" That's all we 
know about it. But — say, folks, I don't be- 
lieve we'd be making any bad mistake if we 
went right straight ahead out of the depths of 
our ignorance and took a chance on thanking 
God for that bit of tenderness ; for I believe as 
much as I believe you and I are here right now 
for a common purpose — a lyceum entertain- 
ment and uphft — that He sent it, intending to 
make us say, "Well, if that little rascal is as 
much of a pest tomorrow as she has been every 
day now for a week or two, I'm going to see 
if it doesn't help matters some, at our house, 
if I'm a little better myself." And as that 

51 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

thought came to me, these lines came right 
along with it: 

Sleep, little baby, sleep! 

Thy father is watching near. 
His hand on thine is love's own sign 

That thou hast no need of fear. 
In the years to come, when thou hast thine own, 

When there's never a heart-beat free from fear, 
Thou'lt then recall thy youth, and all 

The love of a heart no longer near — 
Sleep, little baby, sleep! 

But before I could get out of the room to 
hurry to my desk and write down those lines 
that had come as an inspiration, I noticed the 
little thing stirring uneasily in her sleep. Her 
lips were moving. I heard the rustle of a 
whisper. Was she communing with the angels 
while she slept? The words I caught as I bent 
low above the snowy pillow where lay the 
golden ringlets and the rose-bud lips were : 

"Daddy, scratch my back!" 

Now, that was an awful jolt to you, I know, 
52 



JUST AMONG US PARENTS 

but I can't help it. It shocked me just as 
much, at the time. For then I had no more 
sense than you had just now! Not a bit! 
I was actually expecting something angelic 
from that young one of mine! But why 
should I have expected it? She was my child! 
What makes you and me be such dupes as 
to expect our children to be angelic? Where 
would the poor little things get it? Not 
from us, goodness knows! I'll tell you right 
now that if ever your child or mine shows 
any signs of being angelic and keeps up 
the performance very long, you may begin 
gravely to suspect that the law of heredity 
has been either repealed or declared uncon- 
stitutional. It keeps you and me — saying 
nothing about any absentees — clear up to our 
level best and then some to be half way wise 
enough and good enough to be the right 
kind of parents for plain, ordinary, human 
children. 



53 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Parental Infatuation 

But did you ever notice that when you are 
at a public entertainment where children take 
part, no matter whether you are acquainted 
in that neighborhood, if you sit up close to 
the platform where you can let an eye ramble 
around over the congregation or the audi- 
ence or whatever you call it you can pick out 
with deadly accuracy the parents of whatever 
little rabbit is up there spouting at the time? 
Ha! You can do it, can't you? You don't 
even have to look for a family resemblance. 
All you need to do is to squint around till you 
locate a couple of necks about nine feet longer 
than any other necks in the place, and — you've 
got 'em! Those are the parents. You 
couldn't miss 'em in a thousand years. But 
did you ever stop to figure on what it is that 
stretches those necks that way? Do it right 
now! It's father- and mother-love, which is 
the finest thing in this whole world. It has 

54 



PARENTAL INFATUATION 

to be. For it is the highest and purest and 
truest earthly type of that great big infinite 
Father-love that we all have to cling to and 
depend upon now and forever and forever and 
forever more. So let 'em stretch! 

And an old friend of mine who had no form 
of culture except agriculture, but whose heart 
was located exactly where all real parents' 
hearts are located, told me how he felt and 
what he thought one time when he saw his own 
little tad take part in a program. And that 
old hardboiled ignoramus came so nearly feel- 
ing and thinking exactly as all regular par- 
ents feel and think under similar circumstances, 
that I saved what he said and took it home 
with me and pickled it in a home-made sirup 
of rhythm and rhyme, so that if ever I hap- 
pened to drift into this town of yours and meet 
up with you folks this way and nothing inter- 
rupted us, we could just talk it over, like the 
old neighbors we are. And this is what he 
said: 

55 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

When Our Gal Spoke A Piece 

I ben t' doin's off an' on, 

Like apple-bees an' spellin's, 
T' quart'ly meetin's, public sales, 

Hangin's an' weddin' bellin's ; 
But nothin' — sence the shootin' scrape 

Down on Bill Jones's lease — 
Hez worked me up like t'other night 

When our gal spoke a piece ! 

'Twuz down t' th' oP frame meetin' house — 

They called it "childern's day"; 
Th' young 'uns done it purtnigh all. 

Except th' preacher's say ; 
An' that hull program wriggled off 

Slicker'n melted grease. 
But th' place where I fergot t' breathe 

'S where our gal spoke a piece ! 

The sup'intendent spoke right up — 

I heerd him call her name ! 
An' there she come a trottin' out — 

T' others may looked th' same, 
But they wa'n't nary nuther one, 

Not even Thompson's niece, 
That looked wuth shucks to Moll an' me 

When our gal spoke a piece. 
56 



WHEN OUR GAL SPOKE A PIECE 

Me an' my woman set down front, 

Right clost th' mourners' bench; 
An' list'nin' to that young'un speak 

Give us an' awful wrench ! 
An' when we heerd 'em cheer an' cheer 

We set like two ol' geese, 
Wipin' th' silly tears away 

While our gal spoke a piece! 

'Twuz jest some little, easy thing, 

Like "Twinkle, Little Star," 
Er Mary's leetle cosset lamb, 

Er somethin' like that thar, 
But 'twant no twinklin' starlight beams, 

Ner tags frum lammie's fleece, 
That made us blow our noses hard, 

When our gal spoke a piece. 

I haint ben what I'd orto ben ; 

I've staid away frum church. 
An' sometimes Moll an' me hez thought 

They'd left us in the lurch ; 
But — wal, we've kinder rounded up, 

An' let our wand'rin's cease, 
Sence we wuz down there t'other night 

An' heerd her speak a piece. 



57 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

As To Swell-Head 

But you know the kind of egotism that 
makes parents think their own children are 
the crowning work of the whole creative scheme 
— ^you know parents really believe that the only 
reason there were any people in the world be- 
fore their young ones was that up to that time 
the Creator was merely getting in practice on 
'most any old thing — I say that sort of egotism 
isn't the kind that hurts anything. That sort 
only makes this world a sweet enough place for 
us to live in long enough to grow up to where 
we can start in to have good sense if ever we 
are going to have it. But there is another kind 
of egotism that we don't have to handle with 
soft gloves or call pet-names. There is a kind 
called "swell-head," and that's a disease! An 
awful disease. 

One of the most remarkable things about 
swell-headitis is that the person with the least 
excuse for it has it the worst. Another thing 

58 



AS TO SWELL-HEAD 

is that the person most worth approaching is 
the easiest to approach. It is the pin-head who 
puts a barbed wire entanglement of what he 
wants you to think is dignity, around himself. 
Don't let him fool you with that. That isn't 
dignity. That's self-defence. He knows in- 
stinctively that he won't stand close inspec- 
tion. 

Another thing about swell-head is that the 
emptier the head the more it swells. It's so 
much easier to pump up a football than a door- 
knob. And another thing still is that this dis- 
ease is so intermittent! You can have it very 
badly one day, think you've entirely recovered 
the next day, take down the quarantine card, 
disinfect the place and fire the doctor, and the 
very next day be broken out with the terriblest 
case of it you ever saw ! You never know when 
you're through with it or it with you. 

But the most remarkable symptom of all, 
about swell-head, is that it is always the other 
person who has it. Now, every one of you 

59 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

folks — bright as you are — began thinking of 
somebody else, just as soon as I said "swell- 
head," didn't you! Of course, you did. 
That's one of the symptoms. 

It's a remarkable disease, I tell you, and 
neither you nor I can explain it. And lis-ten ! 
I've been married so long, myself, that when- 
ever there is anything I can't explain, I confess 
it. Every married man here knows he might 
just as well. It saves time, if not trouble. So 
I'm going to break down and confess to you 
right now, that every one of you has had this 
disease. You see, that saves you a lot of painful 
confession and doesn't hurt my feelings a bit. 

But I'll play fair with you. I used to have 
that swell-head thing so badly, about the time 
I escaped from college, that I got to lying 
awake nights worrying over what should be- 
come of the world if anything happened to 
me! Isn't that pathetic? When you get that 
way, that's the limit. You can't have it 
any worse than that. I dare you to. Na- 

60 



EGOTISM'S ANTIDOTE 

ture won't let j^ou. When you get about 
to that point of inflation Nature comes along 
with a cross-cut saw or a crow-bar or a coal- 
pick or some other delicate instrument like 
that, and punctures you. And when Nature 
operates for an aggravated case of swell-head, 
no anaesthetic is applied. You get all the 
agony that is coming to you then. And once 
when I had tumbled to the depths from the 
heights where I had had no business fooling 
around in the first place, I wrote this little 
thing that I wish you would all take home 
with you — not to apply to yourselves. No- 
body ever does that, but — to your neighbor 
when he gets that way: 

Egotism's Antidote 

When ye kind o' git t' thinkin' 

Ye're th' whole endurin' thing, 
Wlien ye think th' world must have ye 

Same's a kite must have a string, 
Then it's time t' fix fer dodgin' 

An' begin t' look around — 
61 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

'Cause they's somepin' goin' t' hit ye 
That'll surely take ye down. 

When ye git t' livin', reg'lar, 

'Way up in th' upper air, 
An' when folks without a field-glass 

Couldn't find ye anywhere, 
Then it's time to git yer parachute 

An' see 't it's workin' right. 
While ye glance tow'rd terry firmy 

Pickin' out a spot t' light. 

'Cause most folks is lots like water — 

Finds their levels off an' on, 
Though they 'vaporate occasional' 

An' we wonder where they've gone; 
But they're bound t' light back somehow, 

Fog, er rain, er coolin' dew — 
An' when I say "folks," I reckon 

That's includin' me and you. 

And if there's anyone here who can't re- 
member when he was a fool, he's one yet! 

That Photographic Crime 
But I think I think of something right now 
that will take the swell-head out of anybody 

62 



THE FAMILY GROUP 

who isn't mildewed with it. And that is — if 
any of you folks, no matter how good-looking 
you are, or even how good-looking you think 
you are (and isnH there a lot of difference in 
some cases!) will just pause one horrified min- 
ute and think how your picture looks in that 
old "family group" you've got hid out, some- 
where at home ! There — I thought that would 
jolt you. Isn't that thing a fright though! 
Now, if you can take a good look at that bunch 
of scare-crows, in a good light, and stay proud 
— there's something serious the matter with 
you. Yet you wouldn't take anything in the 
world for that old picture — indeed, you 
wouldn't take anything on earth for that pic- 
ture ! You couldn't get anything for it ! 

The Family Group 

I hain't a spark o' city pride — at least so people 

say; 
I don't care who finds out my hair is full o' germs 

of hay ; 



6B 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

I don't care who discovers that I growed up on a 
farm 

An' hain't got ust t' street-cars ner that skeerj fire- 
alarm; 

But one sad mem'ry makes me gasp like when I had 
th' croup, 

An' that's t' think how we-all looked in that ol' 
fam'ly group. 

T' start in with, they's none of us would had it took 

that day — 
Jist happened we was all in town, 'cause Bill was 

goin' away 
With his best bib an' tucker on; an' so he says t' 

me: 
"Le's go an' git a fam'ly group, like Williamses," 

says he. 
O' course we all felt proud o' Bill, an' fell in with a 

whoop 
An' flocked right up them gallery stairs t' git that 

fam'ly group. 

Th' photo-grapher kind o' laughed when we went 

flockin' in — 
I've spent some years, in later life, a-flggerin' on 

that grin. 



64 



TIIK 1 AMILV (iROUP 

An' 15111 111' hossod Ih' job because Ik- was a-goin' 

away — 
Talked up an' sliowcd that ])iclur iiwin lie wasn't 

any jay. 
Th' feller went an' hid awhile in some ol' smelly coop. 
An' /;()t 'is shooter ready \'cv T lake our fam'ly 

^roup. 

He put ma in Ih'' middle wiih pa scjuatlin' by her side; 
lie dra^^ged Mahaly out from where sheM snuck away 

t' hide ; 
He yanked our chins, he (i\<'d our hands /m' pulled 

our faces 'roiuid. 
An' handled us all over like he's buy in' us by th' 

})Ound. 
Then went an' hid behint a ra^ an"* ^ive a little stoop 
An' says "That's all- nex' Saturday." HeM took 

our fam'ly ^roup ! 

I see it yit ! Hill fixed up, lookin' like a full-blowed 

rose 
Amongst a l)uneli o' rag-weeds; pa's a wiinklln' up 

'is nose ; 
Mahaly's finger's in 'er mouth; Moll's got a shee[)ish 

grin ; 
Tom's mad, an' I've got on some boots with awful 

wrinkles in. 

65 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Ma's worried 'cause that head-clamp tilted up her 

bonnet-scoop — 
I'm sorry Bill suggested that we git a fam'lj group. 

I dunno if that pictur man's in bizness yit or not, 
But if he is, an' I can find th' one partic'lar spot 
Where he's at work, I'll git a gun, and sneak away 

some night, 
An' when I find him, he'll skiddoo or him an' me will 

fight! 
I'd turn that weepon loose on him with one wild injun 

whoop 
And let th' sunshine flicker through th' man that 

made that group. 

Ma laughs about it, but she keeps it hangin' on th' 

wall. 
Mahaly's dead — her baby's there, a-growin' big an' 

tall. 
All of us is scattered out — some of us gittin' gray; 
An' pa sets dreamin' on th' porch, through every 

sunny day. 
I guess God's gittin' ready fcr t' make a gentle swoop 
An' take us up t' where they'll be a better fam'ly 

group. 



66 



NAMES BEFORE AND AFTER 

Names Before and After 

But speaking of the little things at home, I 
want to tell you folks the shortest story there 
is. Not the shortest article there is — don't 
misunderstand me. The shortest article there 
is is a poem I wrote not long ago, myself, by 
hand — almost entirely by hand. The title of 
this shortest-possible poem is ''The Antiquity 
of Microbes," and the poem itself is: 

Adam 
Had 'em. 

But the story I was going to tell you is this: 
Once upon a time there was a little baby who 
was called Henry; — until he was born, and 
then they changed his name to Henrietta. But 
for some reason or another, or without any 
reason — for parents aren't guided by reason. 
And don't you know we ought to thank the 
Lord every time we think of it, that parents 
aren't guided by reason. Why, if parents had 

67 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

never been governed by anything warmer or 
sweeter or tenderer or holier than reason, you 
and I should have been carried off and drowned 
like superfluous kittens, when we were little. 
That's awful, I know, but it is true. It wasn't 
reason that made them keep us and be 
good to us and sacrifice their comfort for our 
comfort day after day, night after night, un- 
complainingly through the years without any 
prospect of reward — no, that was the most un- 
reasonable thing the world ever saw. There 
wasn't a symptom or a trace of reason in that 
performance. It was something infinitely 
more near the divine than reason — it was pure, 
unselfish love, directly from the only fountain 
head that pure unselfish love ever knew. And 
so, as I say, for some reason or another, or be- 
yond and above and better than all reason the 
father of this little Henrietta proposition 
thought just as much of her as he had been 
planning to think of Henry; and this is what 
the silly old thing said about it: 

68 



THE GIRL-CHILD 

The Giri.-Child 

'Course we'd figgcrcd on a boy-child, same as people 

always does — 
Baby -girls is jest th' uselessest they is er ever was. 
Helpless when they're kids, an' helpless when they're 

middle-aged er old — 
All th' fambly turns pertectors fer th' ewe-lamb of 

the fold. 
Dassent ever pop th' question, even though she's lost 

in love; 
Has t' set an' wait till some man labels 'er 'is turtle- 
dove. 
Yit it wa'n't a boy, by gracious ! when it come, th' 

other day. 
But we've kind o' got a notion that we'll keep it, 

any way. 

'Course 'twas dreadful disapp'intin' that it couldn't 

bin a boy, 
An' th' tears we shed er swallered wa'n't no sparklin' 

tears o' joy; 
But she's jest so small an cunnin', an' she cuddles 

up so sweet, 
With 'er fists like velvet rosebuds an' 'er little 

wrinkled feet — 

69 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Clingin' close, jest like th' tendrils of th' mornin'- 

glorj vine 
As it clambers up th' porch-post on a piece o' cotton 

twine — 
Never knowin' she hain't welcome as th' flowers is 

in May; 
So we've somehow got a notion that we'll keep 'er, 

any way. 

Then, ag'in, I thought o' mother — she was onct a 

baby-girl ! 
Ain't no tellin' jest which eyester-shell's th' one that 

hides th' pearl. 
Who'd 'a' knowed when she was little that she'd ever 

be so great. 
An' would make my dear old daddy sich a stiddy 

runnin'-mate .f' 
Then th' one that lays an' snuggles with this bran'- 

new baby hyer — 
Would my life be worth th' livin' if it hadn't bin fer 

her? 
She was jest as pink an' helpless as this new one is, 

one day ; 
So it's mighty easy guessin' that we'll keep her, any 

way. 



70 



KIDS VS. KIYOODLES 

Kids vs. Kiyoodles 

But some people would rather have a dog! 

Why one time last summer or some other 
summer, neither you nor I cares when, I was 
travelhng through Iowa, going from Ft. 
Dodge down to Des Moines in one of those 
inter-Reuben cars, when I noticed two women 
in the same car I was partly occupying. Now, 
I don't want to fool you into believing that it is 
anything remarkable or unusual for me to 
notice women somewhere away from home. I 
notice 'em, all right, wherever I go, and I 
don't care who knows it. I like 'em, and I 
don't care who knows that either. I always 
did like 'em. I began Hking 'em when I was 
very small. 

Why, when I was a little bit of a flannel- 
faced squawking runt that nobody else in 
the world would have thought anything but an 
unmitigated, unexpurgated nuisance, there was 
a woman — a good woman ; one of the saints of 

71 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

earth ; and supposed to be in her right mind at 
the time, ready at any moment, if necessary, to 
lay down her precious hfe for my worthless one. 

My mother was a woman! And so strong 
was my prejudice in their favor from the hour 
of my first acquaintance with her up to right 
now, that as soon as I had reached the 
age at which I should select someone to be 
more sacred to me than ever my own selfish 
soul's eternal salvation, I unhesitatingly chose 
a woman. 

My wife is a woman ! And when our oldest 
two boys reach manhood's years, they are going 
to be women too, for they are girls now and I 
don't care. But if my son grows up a sissy I'll 
break his neck ! 

So you see, there is nothing remarkable in the 
fact that I noticed those two women. They 
were the only ones in sight. The woman on the 
right hand side of the car was nicely tailoied 
and coiffured, her hands showed the attention 
of an expert manicurist, her suit-case was plas- 

72 



KIDS VS. KIYOODLES 

tered all over from stem to stern on port and 
bow sides with foreign hotel labels, and her hair 
— well, whoever's hair that was she was wear- 
ing — was done up in these little — these little — 
oh, you know what I mean ! They don't wear 
'em now, but some years ago they used to 
wear sled-loads of them. These little — per- 
oxide Wienerwursts. Whenever I see a stack 
like that I smell a "rat'M 

But the woman on the other side of the car 
was a totally different type of chromo. She 
wasn't so well dressed. She had on an old 
ready-made jacket suit that — honest to good- 
ness that thing didn't fit her anywhere. That 
suit had been marked down — marked down! 
Why, somebody in the store that had had that 
thing wished onto 'em had got writer's cramp 
marking that suit down before they finally 
got shut of it — nine-seventy-eight, eight-sixty- 
eight, seven-fifty-eight — I don't know where 
they really did stop marking that thing down 
or why. If they had marked it down to one 

73 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

seventy-two they could have knocked off two 
more dollars just as e-easy! You just 
couldn't have lost any money on that suit un- 
less you had bought it. It had been kept 
hanging up at home a long time, too. There 
was a hiked-up place right below the collar, 
and the placquet of her skirt was gaping — 
m-m-mmm! And her hat looked like "some- 
thing the cat had brought in" — wouldn't she 
have made a lovely cover design for the Delin- 
eator or Vogue! No, she wouldn't. But she 
made a better-looking picture to me than the 
other woman made. I'll tell you why: 

The woman on the right hand side of the 
car held in her strong, loving, well-tailored 
"maternal" arms, lavishing on it all the loving 
tenderness and endearment that thousands and 
thousands of human babies are dying for the 
want of right now, one of those little, raveled- 
out-looking, white French poodles of the kind 
that always makes you want to fasten a long 
handle to it and wash windows with it. 

74 



KIDS VS. KIYOODLES 

And the woman on the other side of the car 
held in her arms a totally different kind of a 
bundle. Let's look at it! Wrapped up in 
one of those old-fashioned plaid brown-and- 
gray shawls — youVe seen fifty thousand shawls 
of exactly that same weave and pattern; with 
most of the twisted fringe pulled off — just a 
few pieces hanging on by their eyebrows. And 
there were little burnt holes in the shawl — 
some of the older folks among you know how 
those holes got there. Away back when 
grandmother was kind of young hetself some- 
body had put a lot of over-dry chestnut or 
hickory wood in the open fire-place — no, it 
wasn't that! It was right after they had put 
the new roof on the old corn-crib and some- 
body had put a whole armful of the old worn- 
out, dry white-oak clapboards into the fire, 
and they had popped all over the place. That 
old shawl was hanging over the cream- jar right 
there at the edge of the hearth, and got most of 
the sparks. 

75 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

This woman held her bundle tenderly and 
carefully, and whenever a whimper would 
rise she would pull down a bit of that old 
family-keep-sake shawl and say little sweet, 
loving nothings to it — the kind you and I used 
to like to have whispered to us when we were 
better than we've sometimes bem since. So I 
just looked at this woman all the spare time I 
had, instead of at the other one. For I be- 
lieved then, and I'm still stubborn enough to 
believe, that God had guided tliat baby into its 
little poverty-stricken but love-guarded harbor, 
and that He hadn't had a thing to do with lo- 
cating that pup ! 

I'm glad you feel the same way about 
it. And it isn't that we have anything against 
dogs, either. We just don't like to see a per- 
fectly nice dog get in wrong that way. And 
seeing that you feel the same way on the child 
side of the proposition, I'm going to give you a 
sermon a little child gave me once. Don't let 
that word "sermon" scare you — it doesn't 

76 



WHEN PAPA HOLDS MY HAND 

sound like a sermon. I didn't know it was 
one till afterward, and the child never knew it. 

When Papa Holds My Hand 

I'm not a-scared o' horses nor street cars nor any- 

fing, 
Nor automobiles nor th' cabs; an' once, away last 

spring, 
A grea' big hook an' ladder fing went slapty-bang- 

in'by 
An' I was purtnear in th' way, an' didn't even cry ! 
'Cause when I'm down town I go 'round wif papa, 

un'erstand, 
An' I'm not 'fraid o' nuffin' when my papa holds my 

hand. 

W'y street cars couldn't hurt him, an' th' horses 
wouldn't dare; 

An' if a automobile run agin 'im, he won't care! 

He'll al'ys keep between me an' th' fings 'ith danger 
in — 

I know so, 'cause he al'ys has, 'ist ev'ry place we 
been; 

An' nen at night I laugh myself clear into Dreamy- 
land 



77 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

An' never care how dark it is, when papa holds my 
hand. 

'S a funny fing — one night when I puttended I was 

'sleep 
An' papa's face was on my hand, I felt a somepin' 

creep 
Acrost my fingers ; an' it felt ezactly like a tear, 
But couldn't been, for wasn't any cryin', t' I could 

hear. 
An' when I asked him 'bout it he 'ist laughed to 

beat th' band — 
But I kep' wonderin' what it was 'at creeped out on 

my hand. 

Sometimes my papa holds on like I maybe helped 

him, too. 
An' makes me feel most awful good puttendin' like 

I do. 
An' papa says — w'y papa says — ^w'y somepin' like 

'at we 
An' God 'ist keep a holdin' hands the same as him 

an' me. 
He says some uvver fings 'at I 'ist partly un'er- 

stand, 
But I know this — I'm not afraid when papa holds my 

hand. 

78 



AS TO WOMEN 

As To Women 

But as the little girl gets bigger, it doesn't 
have to be ''papa" that holds her hand. 
*'Papa" loses his job. Sometimes it happens 
that that is the one job at which ''Everybody 
Works But Father." And as the little girl 
grows up through the other stages of hand- 
holding, she begins to take on all the other 
habits of the grown-up woman, including one 
you may, if you want to, call the "universal 
feminine habit." Now, you know as well as I 
do that that word "universal" is too big for any 
mere human to go slopping around with. No- 
body can ever know how much it means. But 
when I wrote this thing, I was much younger 
than I am now, and I knew all about it. I 
knew everything then. 

Oh, what a pity it is you couldn't have met 
me then! But you know as we grow older we 
grow less sure about a lot of things. The older 
we are the less we know for sure. That is an 

79 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

awful prospect to hold out to some of you folks 
who don't know much now, but it's the best I 
can do. 

At the time, I was doing newspaper work in 
Los Angeles and the Woman's Federation of 
Clubs had coagulated out there for its biennial 
meeting. The whole town was full of women. 
I stood on the corner of Second and Broadway 
and watched thousands after thousands of them 
drill by on the way to the club house where 
the trouble was going on, and I saw every 
mother's daughter and aunt's niece of the 
crowd do the same thing. I said to myself, 
"I've discovered something." I thought I 
knew everything, but to my surprise I saw 
even I could go on finding out new things. I 
ran up three flights of stairs to my typewriter 
— that, is; to my machine — and wrote this, 
which has been the main joy and solace of 
about seventeen thousand yellocutionists and a 
whole battalion of glee clubs ever since : 



80 



THE UNIVERSAL HABIT 

The Universal Habit 

I saw her go shopping in stylish attire, 

And she felt 

Of her belt 

At the back. 
Her step was as free as a springy steel wire, 
And many a rubberneck turned to admire 

As she felt 

Of her belt 

At the back. 
She wondered if all those contraptions back there 
Were fastened just right — 'twas her unceasing care; 

So she felt 

Of her belt 

At the back. 

I saw her at church as she entered her pew. 

And she felt 

Of her belt 

At the back. 
She had on a skirt that was rustly and new, 
And didn't quite know what the fast'nings might do ; 

So she felt 

Of her belt 

At the back. 
81 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

She fidgeted 'round while the first hymn was read; 
She fumbled about while the first prayer was said. 

Oh, she felt 

Of her belt 

At the back. 

Jack told her one night that he loved her like mad, 

And she felt — 

For her belt 

At the back. 
She didn't look sorry, she didn't look glad; 
Just looked like she thought "Well, that wasn't so 
bad!" 

As she felt 

For her belt 

At the back. 
And — well, I don't think 'twas a great deal of harm, 
For what should the maiden have found but Jack's 
arm, 

When she felt 

For her belt 

At the back? 

Unsatisfied Curiosity 

But for fear some of you may believe I'm an 
anti-suffragist or some other kind of lunatic, 

82 



UNSATISFIED CURIOSITY 

I'm going to try to red-ink the account with 
the women folks by telling something on these 
men. You know woman is charged with hav- 
ing in her make-up all the curiosity in the 
entire solar system and adjacent territory. 
This isn't true. She has all she can carry — 
she isn't short on that. Far be it! But so 
has man all he can carry of it, and he's a better 
lifter. 

I'm going to tell you a story of the most 
curious person I ever heard of and he wasn't 
a woman. He was one of those walk- 
ing, living, breathing human interrogation 
points that simply has to know what is going 
on about him, especially if it's none of his busi- 
ness. 

Well, one day this man with the ingrow- 
ing curiosity was riding along in a rail- 
road train, sitting right behind a man who held 
on his lap a big — now there, I got that wrong ! 
I started to say a big pasteboard box, but it 
wasn't a big box at all. It was a lady's hat 

83 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

box and it wasn't over two and a half feet 
across. You know, there was a time when we 
thought a box as big as that was some box, but 
that was before they began keeping their hats 
in a piano box or a silo. . . . He was carrying 
a box about so big. It was a green bandbox 
with a green lid on it. The lid was tied on with 
eleven or twelve strands of good, stout twine 
— you know the kind of brown, glazed twine, 
you stop in and borrow at the express office 
when you are going to send something by par- 
cel-post — that's the kind. That's what puts 
express companies out of business — somebody 
stringing them all the time. That string was 
criss-crossed right squarely in the geography 
ical center of the lid, and tied in fourteen hard 
knots and then in a loop-knot so it would be 
easy to untie. And he held that box as if his 
life depended on it. He never let go of it — 
he never took his eyes off it. That is, both 
eyes. One eye watched the box, no matter 
where the other eye was working at the time. 

84 



UNSATISFIED CURIOSITY 

His eyes were made that way, so he could 
carry a box and watch it and not miss any of 
the scenery outside. And there were holes 
punched in the lid of the box. Somebody had 
just taken his finger and shoved it down 
through the lid, like that, pulled his finger out 
—the same hole!— and then punched another 
one. The man behind watched the box, he 
watched the man, he watched the man watch 
the box, he watched the box get watched by 
the man. After awhile he happened to think: 

"My goodness gracious, but I'm getting 
careless! That man is a plumb stranger to 
me, and he might get off somewhere with that 
box and I might never know what was in it!" 

Just think of that— appalling thought! He 
might never know what that stranger car- 
ried in that box ! So he got busy. He leaned 
forward and stretched up to the full extent of 
the law, and said: 

"Ahem! Stranger, it looks as if you might 
have something in that box." 

85 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

"Uh-huh, I have." 

A few minutes' silence. The man felt very 
badly. Then he hit the stranger again, to see 
if he could shake anything loose. 

"I s'pose it's something alive, maybe." 

"Yeah, it is." 

Another painful silence. The man felt 
worse. He tapped the victim in a fresh place 
to see if he would flow any more freely. 

"I s'pose you got that lid on so it won't 
git out." 

"Uh-huh." 

The man was running out of patience. He 
used up all he had left by saying: 

"I s'pose you got them holes punched in the 
lid so's it'll get air and won't smother." 

"Yep, that's the idea exactly." 

Now, that man was out of patience. He 
said : 

"Well, would you mind tellin' a feller what 
that is in that box?" 

"No, I wouldn't mind it at all." 
86 



UNSATISFIED CURIOSITY 

Now, the man was worse than out of patience 
— he was just plain United States m-a-d mad! 
That was all. So he said: 

"Well, what is that in that box?" 

"It's a mongoose." 

"It's a what!!!!!" 

"It's a mongoose, I told you." 

"Huh! It was nice of you to tell me, but I 
dunno any more about it than I did. What is 
a mongoose?" 

"It's a little animal that lives in India and 
eats snakes." 

"Eats snakes! Wow! What do you want 
with an animal that eats snakes?" 

"Well, if you must butt into my business, I 
don't mind telling you that I have a brother- 
in-law at home that drinks a great deal, and 
every once in awhile he has an attack of de- 
lirium tremens, and we bought this thing to 
eat up the snakes." 

"Well, haven't you folks got any sense? 
Don't you know that them snakes a feller sees 

87 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

when he gets that way, ain't real snakes?" 
"Ye-es! We know that. And this isn't a 
real mongoose, either." 

Now, I know how you feel about that, but I 
can't help it. I'd like mighty well to go right 
on and be nice and tell you just what that 
really was, in that box, but I don't know my- 
self. The man wouldn't tell me at all ! 

Jumping at Conclusions 

I had a real reason for telling you that story 
— to teach you over again what you have all 
learned so often: that it doesn't pay to jump at 
conclusions, to use hasty judgment. It never 
pays to jump at conclusions. I used to have 
a dog that did that, and it fixed him, all right! 
That dog would jump at any thing's conclu- 
sion, that went past him. A cow, or anything 
like that. He would wait till a cow got barely 
past him, then he would jump at her conclu- 
sion. And like other people who haven't sense 
enough to keep them from it, he would hang 

88 



JUMPING AT CONCLUSIONS 

onto the first conclusion he got hold of, 
whether it was the right one or not. You've 
seen people like that! Never right about any- 
thing, never doing any thinking for them- 
selves ! Why, this dog beat that kind of folks 
all to pieces. I've seen him go around and 
around half an hour at a time, sparing no pains 
or effort to try to reach his own conclusion. 

But I lost him because of that very habit. 
His name was August. He was given to me 
by a German friend of mine. He was a Ger- 
man poodle. That is, the dog was a German 
poodle. I named him August after this 
friend who gave him to me just before the 
assessor was expected. I was very fond of 
August. One time August was lying out in 
the middle of the road and a big, black, seven- 
teen-hand, bad-dispositioned mule came by. 
August jumped at that mule's conclusion. 
And the next day was the first of September, 
because that was the last of August. 

You know, I must have had an awfully reck- 
89 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

less spell sometime ago — I told that story to 
an English tourist who was tramping about 
this country with a plate-glass window hung to 
one eye by a rope. He looked very unhappy 
over the story and said: 

"Well, me deah fellow! What's the bally 
difference what time of the yeah it was when 
the bloomin' dog was killed!" 

Just like that! That's as nearly as that 
feeble August- September wheeze got under 
his hide! 

The Slandered English Defended 

But do you know, that was mighty hateful 
of me to turn aside and take a gratuitous wal- 
lop at that Englishman, who wasn't harming 
me at all. But it's in our American blood! 
The English settled this country once and this 
country settled the English twice afterward. 
I think we're going to lose that prejudice now, 
by fighting in a common and righteous cause 
with England against the enemy of all civiliza- 

CO 



AMERICANUS BONEHEADUS 

tion. But we talk always as if all the English 
were the kind of people who can't see a joke. 
Anybody with good sense or the ability to 
think knows that isn't true. We talk also as 
if everybody who couldn't see a joke were 
English. That is just as foolish and untrue. 
Lis'ten: There are American-born bone- 
heads-de-luxe! Born under the fluttering 
folds of the Stars and Stripes and yet couldn't 
see a joke in broad daylight with the help of a 
lantern or a microscope. Let us sob together 
a few minutes — the case deserves it. We sob 
a lot over things that aren't half so serious. 

Americanus Boneheadus 

Why, down in Baltimore where I live, 
where the Star Spangled Banner that we all 
love — and none of us can sing — was written, 
we have that kind of critters. Once just be- 
fore starting out on one of these romps of 
mine I went into a big department store — one 
of the kind that miraculously and with un- 

91 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

canny cleverness manages to have in stock 
everything on the face of this planet except 
the one little measly thing you went after in a 
big hurry — how do they do it! They just sold 
the last one, but they've ordered some more. 
Isn't it comforting to know they've ordered 
some more! I went up to the United States 
senatorial looking man who was floor-walking, 
and — but that man wasn't a United States 
senator, really. I found out afterward that 
he was a perfect gentleman. Yet he looked 
as much like a United States senator as any- 
body dare look and expect to hold a job. See- 
ing he looked like a senator I knew he was a 
questionable person, so I questioned him. I 
said : 

"Where's the gents' furnishing depart- 
ment?" 

"Back up that stairway and turn over two 
aisles." 

I wouldn't do anything of the kind! I 
92 



AMERICANUS BONEHEADUS 

wasn't going carrying on that way in his place. 
But I thought maybe I knew what he meant, 
so I went up that stairway face-first, as I 
nearly always do among strangers if I am 
watched closely, and went over past the end of 
a couple of counters. Another blank face 
shot up before me like a jack-in-the-box, and 
said: 

"Something for you, sir?" 

I said, "Yep, I want to look at some union 
suits." 

"In underwear?" he asked. 

"No," I replied, "a hat." 

Only a little while before that I had rushed 
into another department store for some home * 
shopping I had been forgetting every day reg- 
ularly for a month— that's the way with men. 
Aren't they the awfullest shoppers? They go 
shopping so listlessly. They shouldn't do it. 
They ought always to take a list with them. 
I approached a young lady salesman with her 

93 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

hands draped over her digestion, standing 
there on her feet, doing nothing useful, and 
said : 

"Where do you keep your kimonos?" 

'Tor a lady?" she asked. 

"No," I said, "for my uncle, a section- 
boss." 

Only a few years ago I was out in Los An- 
geles, California. I hadn't been out there for 
five years. You know the population changes 
there every few minutes, and I didn't see why 
it wasn't safe for me to go back again if I 
wanted to. And another thing — when I lived 
there I wore a mustache that I think was about 
the reddest thing in captivity. It was so red 
that people a block away thought my nose was 
bleeding. I had shaved off that facial torch 
and thought I was completely disguised. So 
I went into a shoe-store where I used to have 
quite a large account, before I moved away 
and it wasn't any account. A young man 
came up to me and said : 

94 



A RAILROAD WRECK 

"HeMo, there!" 

I said, "You get out! You don't mean to 
say you remember me!" 

"Remember you!" he snorted. "I never 
forget anybody's face that I ever fitted a pair 
of shoes on." 

A Railroad Wreck 
Just a few weeks before that I had been 
travelling along through the southern part of 
the state of Iowa, on an eastbound Burlington 
train, going about fifty-five knots per hour 
through the outskirts — now, about those out- 
skirts. I'm not sure I know what I'm talking 
about. I was in the town only a little bit, and 
my attention was attracted to many other 
things. I don't really know whether that 
town had on anything except its outskirts. 
And let me tell you now: If that town's 
outskirts had been as thin and as scarce as 
some I've witnessed since, that train would 
never have whistled for it. It would just 

95 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

have covered up the headhght and hurried by, 
blushing. 

But as I say, we were going about fifty- 
five miles an hour through that little town 
when all of a sudden a brake-beam dropped 
down and ripped the hind trucks off of the 
mail car and away went that whole train in 
one mass of human and fifty-seven other vari- 
eties of junk. I was among and a part of said 
junk. Nobody was killed. Several of us 
were hammered up some. The man next to 
me in that train — one of the finest men and 
best companions I have ever known — was 
mashed into a jelly! The jelly was right in 
front of him in the dining-car and he was 
mashed right slap into it and didn't get hurt 
a bit. ... I had a broken arm. Just a slight 
crack — only about fifteen hundred dollars' 
worth when we settled. We were lying along 
— did you ever notice that when anybody gets 
hurt in any kind of public conveyance he starts 
right in lying? You can't believe a thing he 

96 



A RAILROAD WRECK 

says till after the company has settled with 
him. 

I say we were lying along on piles of 
hay and Pullman blankets when the folks in 
that big Iowa meadow came running like quar- 
ter horses to "pass this way and view the re- 
mains." They thought a whole lot of us had 
been pulverized for their amusement; but we 
hadn't. We were awfully sorry, on their ac- 
count, and apologized profusely to them and 
told them with a few rehearsals we should 
probably have done much better — we had just 
got that thing up on the spur of the moment. 
We'd never been thrown together before any- 
where. You see, we wanted to make good so 
that if we should ever hold another wreck there 
they would all buy season-tickets and come. 
One old gentleman with a big straw-hat and a 
set of maa-maa ! whiskers came up and looked 
compassionately down on poor, broken me and 
said: 

"Was you hurt in the coach, mister?" 
97 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

"No," I answered apologetically, "I was 
hurt in the elbow, but I came mighty nearly 
being hit in the vestibule." 

The High Dive 

Over in my own native state of Ohio, a few 
winters ago, I was sitting at the supper-table 
one night beside the young man who had 
charge of the entertainment course in that 
town, when I said: 

"Oh, by the way, I wish you'd have one glass 
of water out on the stage tonight, will you?" 

"To drink?" he inquired. 

"No, indeed," I replied indignantly, "I 
make a high dive in the second act." 

The Shocking Verse 

And then you folks know that there is no- 
body in all this world mean enough to try de- 
liberately to sneak a joke into a piece of obit- 
uary verse. That is about the last thing on 
earth that should be given a hypodermic 

98 



THE SHOCKING VERSE 

squirt of hilarity or frivolity. But one time 
when I was editing a paper down at Rich- 
mond, Indiana, there were some folks who 
came in — the kind of folks who never smiled 
voluntarily in all their born days. You know 
the kind. The sort that infest in small num- 
bers every community, who mistake their own 
stupidity for seriousness. Not quite enough 
home above the eyebrows to permit them to 
see the merry jest that makes others smile, so 
they remain solemn. 

They should be approached "more in sorrow 
than in anger." We will all admit there is 
profound seriousness in their case, and let it 
go at that. . . . I've always had a prejudice 
against that kind of folks because I got 
whipped on account of one of 'em once. I was 
taken to church when I was a little bit of a tad 
down in Southern Ohio where there was an 
old-fashioned preacher that didn't know a 
thing. 

Now, when I just mildly and plainly state 
99 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

that he didn't know anything, I have under- 
stated the case — I have promoted him. He 
didn't even suspect anything. And right in 
the middle of the service that old man said 
something that made me cackle out loud in 
meeting and get whipped when I went home. 
You'd have done the same if you had been there 
and heard him. You don't know what it was ! 
He called a sepulcher a sel-pucker! Now, if 
any of you folks in your most hilarious mo- 
ments can think of a funnier word than sel- 
pucker, go to it! I can't ... But those peo- 
ple who had brought in those obituary lines had 
that same sel-pucker type of a sense of humor. 
The first two lines scared me nearly to death 
and the next two nearly gave me hysterics. 
I'll tell you what they were, and you'll get the 
same shock I did: 

Dearest grandpa, how we miss you; 
Miss you, Oh, we cannot tell ! 
Yet we hope some day to meet you, 
Yes, we'll all meet you in heaven. 
100 



POETIC JUSTICE 

You see, they plumb spoiled that rhyme, 
but look what they pulled grandpa out of! 
They gave the old rascal a transfer, just in 
time! 

Poetic Justice 

But sometimes we smarties who go around 
making fun of other people because their sense 
of humor isn't just exactly like ours — we get 
caught and punished — don't we just! One 
time — and I certainly do hate to tell about this, 
for it hurts me even to think of it — I was 
going from Baltimore to Pittsburgh on a 
Baltimore and Ohio train. Just as we were 
getting close to McKeesport a man got up 
from his seat and went across the aisle and 
slid into the seat beside another fellow. The 
man who had gone across the aisle braced 
himself as for some awful ordeal, took in a 
deep breath till he looked like a pouter pigeon, 
and said: 

"C-c-c-can y-y-you t-t-t-t-t-tell m-me wh- 
101 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

what t-time this t-t-train g-gets to P-p-p-p-p- 
p-p-p-Pittsburgh ?" 

The other man didn't answer him. He just 
looked scared at him. I couldn't imagine 
what was wrong. I saw by his face that he 
heard all right. It was too deep for me. I 
didn't see why the man didn't answer before 
something broke. I thought that fellow would 
die or explode or something from the pressure 
he was carrying. But he didn't. He was a 
gritty chap. He took in another breath like 
that first one, cranked himself up, cut out the 
muffler, threw himself into low gear, stepped on 
the accelerator, changed the mixture a time or 
two, went from magneto back to battery, and 
sounded as if he had three dirty spark-plugs 
and mud in his timer. He said it again. But 
still the man didn't answer him. He looked 
worse scared than he had looked the other time, 
and crawled out past the other fellow's knees — 
I wish you'd have seen the sprint he made for 
the smoking-car. You never saw such run- 

102 



POETIC JUSTICE 

ning. When he reached that refuge he 
slammed the door behind him so hard he 
cracked the glass in it. 

And this other poor chap — afflicted, disap- 
pointed, dejected, went back to his own seat 
and slunk down in it so far he was sitting on his 
collar-button, and heaved a sigh like the last 
suds going out of the sink. It was the saddest 
thing I ever saw in my life. I couldn't stand 
it. I reached up in the rack for my hat, went 
across the aisle and said : 

* 'Cheer up, bud. I couldn't help overhear- 
ing that question you murmured to that man 
who got up and went away from you, and I 
want to tell you that this train is due in Pitts- 
burgh at 6 :25, and she is running right on the 
dot, now." 

He started to thank me. That was only a 
few years ago, he's probably somewhere thank- 
ing me yet. I went on to the smoking-car to 
find that mean man and have an accounting 
with him. I found him. I said: 

103 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

"Look here, old top, why on earth, when 
that poor fellow back there nearly blew up 
trying to ask you something, didn't you say 
something to him — talk to him like a fellow- 
human instead of running off like a rabbit — 
hey?" 

And that man said: 

"D-do y-y-y-y-y-y-you sup-p-p-p-pose I 
w-want to g-g-g-get m-my b-b-b-b-b-b-block 
knocked off?" 

To Prevent A Why Not 

And now, just because if I don't somebody 
will ask me why I didn't, I'm going to give you 
the first thing I ever wrote that made the world 
sit up and deal tenderly with me. You've 
heard this, you've read it a thousand times. 
If you haven't I'm ashamed of you. Yet if I 
don't give it when I, the author, am there 
in person, there is always trouble, so here 
goes: 



104 



FINNIGIN TO FLANNIGAN 

FiNNIGIN To FlANNIGAN 

Superintindint wuz Flannigan; 

Boss av th' siction wuz Finnigin. 

Whinlver th' cyars got oif th' thrack 

An' muddled up things t' th' divvle an' back, 

Finnigin writ it t' Flannigan, 

Afther th' wrick wuz all on agin; 

That is, this Finnigin 

Repoorted t' Flannigan. 

Whin Finnigin furrst writ t' Flannigan, 
He writed tin pa-ages, did Finnigin ; 
An' he tow Id just how th' wrick occurred — 
Yis, minny a tajus, blundherin' wurrd 
Did Finnigin write t' Flannigan 
Afther th' cyars had gone on agin — 
That's th' way Finnigin 
Repoorted t' Flannigan. 

Now Flannigan knowed more than Finnigin — 
He'd more idjucation, had Flannigan. 
An' ut wore 'm clane an' complately out 
T' tell what Finnigin writ about 
In 's writin' t' Musthcr Flannigan. 
So he writed this back : "Musther Finnigin : — 
Don't do sich a sin agin; 
Make 'em brief, Finnigin !" 

105 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

Whin Finnigin got that frum Flannigan 
He blushed rosy-rid, did Finnigin. 
An' he said : "I'll gamble a whole month's pay 
That ut'll be minny an' minny a day 
Before sup'rintindint — that's Flannigan — 
Gits a whack at that very same sin agin. 
Frum Finnigin to Flannigan 
Repoorts won't be long agin." 

Wan day on th' siction av Finnigin, 

On th' road sup'rintinded be Flannigan, 

A ra-ail give way on a bit av a currve 

An' some cyars wint off as they made th' shwerrve. 

"They's nobody hurrted," says Finnigin, 

"But repoorts must be made t' Flannigan." 

An' he winked at McGorrigan 

As married a Finnigin. 

He wuz shantyin' thin, wuz Finnigin, 

As minny a railroader's been agin, 

An' 'is shmoky ol' lamp wuz burrnin' bright 

In Finnigin's shanty all that night — 

Bilin' down 's repoort, wuz Finnigin. 

An' he writed this here : "Musther Flannigan : — 

Off agin, on agin. 

Gone agin. — Finnigin." 



106 



THE REASON IN ALL THIS 

The Reason In All This 
And now for the last two minutes, after 
which you grab your hats and things and 
struggle for the door. I want to tell you the 
why of this thing I've been doing— the at- 
tempted humor I have handed out to you. It 
isn't only for the laugh you get out of it. 
That is a part of my aim, and a very legitimate 
part of it. But that isn't all. Humor isn't 
for its own sake alone. It is a means to an end. 
To run a whole one hundred minutes of humor 
with nothing else to it is as foolish as to coal 
up and water a big mogul engine, get up steam 
to the popping-off point and then run it back 
and forth along the whole length of the division 
without hitching anything to it. Humor is 
not the gasoline of life — it is the transmission 
oil and gear-grease. 

You have caught me now and xhen slipping 
in a sermon between the laughs. I didn't care 
if you did catch me at it. Mother wanted 

107 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

every one of her big ugly boys to be regular 
preachers. You know what those good old 
Christian mothers are, God bless 'em. But we 
couldn't all preach alike. Every human being 
is born into the world with the ability to preach 
the gospel in some way that no other human 
being can. If we could only find our own ways 
to preach what a world it would be! But we 
used to think all preaching had to be done the 
same way, and we wanted to please mother. 
One of the boys is a regular preacher and a 
good one. I am neither. I tried it once — one 
consecutive time, to preach the regular way. 
When I had finished, the choir arose bewil- 
deredly to its hind-feet and sang, "Hallelujah, 
'tis done." 

And for once, the choir was right. I saw 
that if ever I preached it would have to be 
some other way. I couldn't do that kind. 
So this was the way that found me — slipping 
the sermons in between the laughs, so that 
maybe they might digest more readily and live 

108 



THE REASON IN ALL THIS 

longer than any other sermons I could preach 
— little sermons so simple that I even under- 
stand them myself! And that is such a help! 
For the purpose of humor is to foster in 
human beings that sane, wholesome philosophy 
or religion known as optimism. Now, op- 
timism isn't what some people think it is. 
Some people think an optimist is that sort 
of thing that goes around grinning all 
the time like a Cheshire cat, saying, "Every- 
thing's all right, everything's all right," 
when half the time everything isn't all right. 
That isn't an optimist who does that — it's 
a cheerful idiot. There's a vast difference 
between an optimist and any kind of idiot. 
It takes intelligence of the finest, faith of the 
most sublime, sanity of the most complete to 
be a real optimist. Faith and intelligence and 
balance to know that although there may be 
heartaches today — and God who made us 
and loves us knows that some todays are just 
crowded with heartaches that nobody but an 

109 



SUNSHINE AND AWKWARDNESS 

idiot or a lunatic could laugh at at the time — 
though those things come and hurt as deeply 
as we think we can bear, those things aren't 
permanent — Oh, isn't it great that they don't 
last always! What a little of the sum-total of 
our life they form! They aren't terminals — 
they are only way-stations and whistling-posts 
and water-tanks on the way toward the great, 
big beautiful finish of things in God's own 
good time and perfect way — ^that He is saving 
as a glorious and satisfying surprise for us. 
And the old woman who said the thing that 
supplied the text for my benediction that comes 
right now was the most perfect optimist; and 
she wasn't laughing a bit when she said: 

Tomorrow 

My life has reached the sunset way; 

'Mid the twilight shadows deep 
The tender love of my Father's voice 

Is lulling my soul to sleep. 
My empty arms are hungering 

For the forms once sheltered there, 

110 



TOMORROW 

But the Father has taken them all away — 
They needed a kindlier care. 

One night when my life was young and strong, 

I was crooning a lullaby 
To my sweet, wee tot three summers old, 

When the baby began to cry 
For the dollies my mother-hands had made, 

And I soothed her childish sorrow 
With the words : "Your babies are put away ; 

You may have them again, tomorrow." 

And now, as I travel the sunset road 

'Mid the twilight soft and deep. 
While my empty arms are starving 

For the forms once hushed to sleep, 
My Father in love bends over me 

And there's hope instead of sorrow 
As He says : "Your babies are safe with me ; 

You may have them again — tomorrow." 



Ill 



By Strickland GillUan 



INCLUDING FINNIGIN 

A book containing eighty poems by the popular 
author of this volume. It includes "Finnigin to 
Flannigan," "The Cry of the Alien," "Me an' Pap 
an' Mother," and other famous poems. There is 
something to hold the thought or touch the heart on 
every page while the verses swing between laughter 
and tears. 

Worth reading over and over. Humanity held up to 
nature. — Boston Globe. 

It is j ust as funny as any verses written. — Chicago 
Daily News. 

There is occasion for a smile, a tear or a big laugh 
on every page, according to how you happen to feel. — 
New York Press. 

Attractive cover. Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 



INCLUDING YOU AND ME 

This delightful book contains over one hundred 
joyous poems of the kind that everybody likes to 
read. Gillilan is one of America's leading humorists 
and his verses appeal to the heart with their quaint 
humor and cheerful, hopeful philosophy. 

You will chase away many blue devils if you keep this 
book near you. — Pittsburgh Gazette Times. 

All cheerful and full of the joy of living and the 
warmth of human brotherhood. They grip the heart. — 
Duluth Herald. 

Every poem is a gem and the collection a sparkling 
galaxy. No one can read the book without feeling more 
cheerful. — Syracuse Post-Standard. 

Handsomely bound in cloth. $1.26 



Forbes & Company, Publishers, Chicago 



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fr^ PHn f/iT 
JAN 19 1923 ) 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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